The Fall of Man

[river]

The fall of man in the Garden of Eden is the foundation of all Christian teaching. Without that fall Christians would not be able to convince people that they need Jesus. Christians say Jesus saves us from our sin. They go to people in Asia, Africa, pre Columbian America, aboriginal Australia and are faced with the question: what sin? How can we convince these people whose behavior and moral standards are far superior to ours that they need a Jesus to save them from sin that is more evident n us than in them? Eureka! The fall of man. Original sin. Brilliant! You’re not a sinner because of what you do but because of who you are. You’re a child of Adam and because he sinned that makes you a sinner even if you never actually commit any sin that in and of itself merits eternal damnation.

Christians tell us that because of Adam’s sin God is just in sending all of us to hell. Without the concept of Adam’s sin there is no justice in condemning the human race and therefore the preaching of the Gospel is moot.

Let’s look at this fall.

God creates man but does not give him the knowledge of good and evil. He places that knowledge in the fruit of a tree then tells the man not to eat the fruit. Having no knowledge of good and evil the man has no way of knowing that it is wrong to do what God told him not to do. In fact his fatal flaw was that he did what everybody told him to do at the time they told him. Eve told him to eat the fruit and he did without delay. There was no wrestling with his conscious. He had none.

When the serpent brought the fruit to Ever her liminal female intuition told her that maybe dying might be something she did not want to do. But noting in her world had ever died so she had no real knowledge of death. She looks at the fruit and sees it is good (in quality or usefulness not morality) for fruit and because she had no knowledge of the concept of lying she believed the serpent when he told her it would make her wise. So she ate it and gave it to Adam.

This is insane. God was supposed to have made these people perfect but even before the fall they make this insane decision. We know what death is. We know what sickness is. If someone gave you a plate of carrots and told you there was cyanide in it and if you eat it you will die would you say “Well you know carrots have lots of vitamin A and other nutrients to improve your eyesight and build your brain cells so when this old cat isn'tt looking I'm going to eat it.� Either Adam and Eve were insane from their creation or they acted on their lack of knowledge.

Then God comes back and acts all surprised. Oh you ate the fruit. Now I’m going to have to punish you. Yet no where did God say he would punish all humanity. In fact in the four or so thousand years between Adam and Paul there is not one biblical writer that attributes the suffering of man to Adam. How is it that it is not strange to the Christian mind that something which had such a catastrophic effect on the entire human race, something that is the very raison detre of Jesus and no prophet great or small thought it worth mentioning?

Question for debate: How can it be just to hold someone accountable when they don't have the faculty to know that what they did was wrong?

[wonderer]

The fall of man in the Garden of Eden is the foundation of all Christian teaching. Without that fall Christians would not be able to convince people that they need Jesus. Christians say Jesus saves us from our sin. They go to people in Asia, Africa, pre Columbian America, aboriginal Australia and are faced with the question: what sin? How can we convince these people whose behavior and moral standards are far superior to ours that they need a Jesus to save them from sin that is more evident n us than in them? Eureka! The fall of man. Original sin. Brilliant! You’re not a sinner because of what you do but because of who you are. You’re a child of Adam and because he sinned that makes you a sinner even if you never actually commit any sin that in and of itself merits eternal damnation.

Christians tell us that because of Adam’s sin God is just in sending all of us to hell. Without the concept of Adam’s sin there is no justice in condemning the human race and therefore the preaching of the Gospel is moot.

Let’s look at this fall.

God creates man but does not give him the knowledge of good and evil. He places that knowledge in the fruit of a tree then tells the man not to eat the fruit. Having no knowledge of good and evil the man has no way of knowing that it is wrong to do what God told him not to do. In fact his fatal flaw was that he did what everybody told him to do at the time they told him. Eve told him to eat the fruit and he did without delay. There was no wrestling with his conscious. He had none.

When the serpent brought the fruit to Ever her liminal female intuition told her that maybe dying might be something she did not want to do. But noting in her world had ever died so she had no real knowledge of death. She looks at the fruit and sees it is good (in quality or usefulness not morality) for fruit and because she had no knowledge of the concept of lying she believed the serpent when he told her it would make her wise. So she ate it and gave it to Adam.

This is insane. God was supposed to have made these people perfect but even before the fall they make this insane decision. We know what death is. We know what sickness is. If someone gave you a plate of carrots and told you there was cyanide in it and if you eat it you will die would you say “Well you know carrots have lots of vitamin A and other nutrients to improve your eyesight and build your brain cells so when this old cat isn'tt looking I'm going to eat it.� Either Adam and Eve were insane from their creation or they acted on their lack of knowledge.

Then God comes back and acts all surprised. Oh you ate the fruit. Now I’m going to have to punish you. Yet no where did God say he would punish all humanity. In fact in the four or so thousand years between Adam and Paul there is not one biblical writer that attributes the suffering of man to Adam. How is it that it is not strange to the Christian mind that something which had such a catastrophic effect on the entire human race, something that is the very raison detre of Jesus and no prophet great or small thought it worth mentioning?

Question for debate: How can it be just to hold someone accountable when they don't have the faculty to know that what they did was wrong?

Some thoughts on the issues your raise here.

Even if Adam hadn't sinned, every human has sinned in their own right, so if humans are to be held accountable to God for sin, we can be held accountable for our own sins, whether or not it was just to hold us accountable for Adam's sin.

However, the whole thing of God holding us accountable for sin is still unjust. God brought sin into existence by creating beings who he knew would sin, first the angels, then man. And he put the tree there! It's his own doing, not ours.

I agree also that it's unjust to hold Adam accountable when he didn't have the knowledge of good and evil before he ate the fruit of that tree.

[river]

The fall of man in the Garden of Eden is the foundation of all Christian teaching. Without that fall Christians would not be able to convince people that they need Jesus. Christians say Jesus saves us from our sin. They go to people in Asia, Africa, pre Columbian America, aboriginal Australia and are faced with the question: what sin? How can we convince these people whose behavior and moral standards are far superior to ours that they need a Jesus to save them from sin that is more evident n us than in them? Eureka! The fall of man. Original sin. Brilliant! You’re not a sinner because of what you do but because of who you are. You’re a child of Adam and because he sinned that makes you a sinner even if you never actually commit any sin that in and of itself merits eternal damnation.

Original sin and the fall of man are not ways of convincing people of their sinfulness, but rather ways of explaining what people already know to be true. I often say that original sin, though one of the more controversial doctrines in Christianity, is the one that we have the most empirical evidence to support.

Christianity does not attempt to convince people that they are sinful. Rather, Christianity relies on people already knowing that they have done wrong. Jesus said that he did not come for the righteous but for sinners. To establish that someone is sinful we need only ask, “Has there ever been a time when you knew what was right and what was wrong, and you did what was wrong?� When the answer is “yes� then a person convicts himself of sin without any outside help.

It is one thing for me to know that I have done something wrong. But it is Christians who embellish this knowledge with the idea that doing something wrong makes me a sinner who deserves to go to Hell.

The majority of people do not have the power and knowledge to be truly evil. To say whether a man is a good man who sometimes does bad things or a bad man who sometimes does good things is a value judgment with absolutely no empirical evidence to back it up.

The problem I have with the rest of the opening post is that it relies very little on the biblical text and almost exclusively on human imagination. Even assuming that the story is literal,

If you don't believe the story is literal then why should it bother you if I don't rely on it?

how do we know that Adam always did what he was told?

because the Bible shows him doing what he is told at the time he is told. He obeyed God and did not eat the fruit until he was told to do something else. He did not eat the fruit until Eve told him to.

Or nothing (such as plants or animals) in Eve’s world has ever died?

because Paul said death came into the world through sin. It's not the Bible so it must be your human imagination that sees something dying in a world before sin entered.

Or that Adam and Eve did not have the faculty to know that something was wrong (I will grant that they had no practical knowledge of evil – they had not sinned – but how do we know that they could not understand that something was wrong without actually doing it)?

The Bible says they had no knowledge of GOOD OR evil. If it is speaking here of practical knowledge that would mean they had no practical knowledge of good as well. Why did God give them a way to get practical knowledge of evil but not practical knowledge of good?

It is you that would steer us away from the Bible . I only pointed out what the Bible says. It is you who try to say it doesn't say what it clearly does say.

[Ankh]

"The fall was God's plan; mankind/Adam had no choice."

"Yes... where sin did abound grace did much more abound." (Romans 5:20)

"That's kinda like a doctor who gives you poison to make you sick just so you will feel grateful to him when he gives you medicine to cure the sickness."

Greetings river,

Though the doctor administered poison to his patient, did he not nevertheless have the cure for his sickness in back of his mind?

In the same way, though God allowed man (Adam) and his posterity to fall into the sickness of sin, did He not have the remedy for man's sickness in His foreknowledge?

"For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all." (Romans 11:32)

"He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, 10 but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." (2 Timothy 1:9-10)

"But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior" (Titus 3:4-5)

Good day

Ankh